


pygmalion

by AnnaofAza



Series: with this ring (debt be paid) [4]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Arranged Marriage, Dubious Consent, M/M, Tutoring
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-07
Updated: 2020-11-07
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:33:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27388009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnaofAza/pseuds/AnnaofAza
Summary: Keith is a treasure. Shiro will see to that.
Relationships: Keith/Shiro (Voltron)
Series: with this ring (debt be paid) [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1752307
Comments: 29
Kudos: 96





	pygmalion

It’s very quickly that Keith realizes to be a perfect spouse, one must be molded into one.

This is solely an investment for Shiro, not him, and it begins with a list of requirements so long that he can imagine the end of it rolling across the manor:

Literature he should absorb and reference. History he should quote from memory. Dead languages that are resurrected for the few who can tell its secrets. Etiquette that seems more important than the meal or event itself. How to keep a household, from rows of neat numbers to how to speak to a servant: low, firm, and never uncertain. He even learns to speak in a more refined dialect, scrubbing out traces of contractions and what one tutor calls “folk language.”

It’s always just one instructor; whether Shiro doesn’t want more people in the house or private tutors are that expensive, Keith doesn’t know, but they’re always sharply dressed with recommendations from private institutions.

Both of them are set up in Shiro’s library, a desk with carved lions’ heads on each of its legs and a chair that no cushion can be made endurable after the first hour. There’s one window, a skylight in the middle of the room, and the paintings that cluttered the walls are taken down, for minimal distraction.

One, with glasses and a thin coating of silver hair, speaks of symbols and aphorisms and alliteration. It's generous of her to assume he'll do such things as write big, important speeches for Shiro, or literary essays or poetry or such to bring honor and fame to the household.

“You don’t want to be labeled as a fame-seeker, but it’s your job to represent your husband,” she says matter-of-factly. “Prop him up, if you will.”

Her advice, although blunt, is true enough. Everything, from projecting his voice when he reads poetry to thinking deeper about what a passage _really means,_ is to make the Shirogane name proud. Keith comes to at least tolerate her for her honesty, but she is gone one morning without a word.

When Keith tries to ask Shiro about this over dinner, Shiro only waves him off, saying she is better suited for university teaching, for Socratic dialogues and salons, not for the “rigors of his education.”

Not everyone is as kind, or invested. Many look at him in disdain, as if he’s slipped in front of the bread line without asking or waiting. Unlike the tutors of his childhood, they cannot be as easily driven away.

Still, he tries: this time, he pretends to be so stupid—which, dismayingly, isn’t hard in certain subjects—fixing them with cow eyes and a slightly open mouth. This does work, but requires patience Keith never knew he had and drains more than amuses.

One—tall with a pointed chin and twin scars on his cheeks—finally snaps at Keith that he's useless, that he's thick-headed, that he can't believe he came all this way from a grand citadel to teach a dolt like him, and slaps a ruler down in front of Keith with enough force to tear his cheek open.

Keith reveals nothing that evening, but finds the room empty when he returns for the next session. Shiro's there, legs crossed, dressed impeccably in a ink-black jacket and pressed trousers.

"I thought I had lessons today," Keith says.

"I found the tutor unsuitable," Shiro replies simply. "So I dismissed him."

Keith starts. "Then..."

“I shall take over your lessons until I find a suitable one. There seems to be… a lack of them, at late.”

He had hoped for a break, but Shiro's not to be argued with. As always, Keith assents, and sinks down at the desk.

* * *

Before he leaves the room, Keith looks around, carefully slides his fingers along wood panels, but there's no sign of peepholes.

* * *

Shiro, as he suspected, is a stern teacher. His fingers are on the back of his neck when Keith reads silently, eyes critical while marking up Keith's clumsily translated Latin or muddled figures. With every letter Keith writes, Shiro grips and guides Keith’s hand hard enough to make his knuckles ache.

“No sloppiness, no carelessness,” Shiro says, each time ink blots a letter or splatters against the desk. When that happens, the paper is crumbled and tossed in a bin, and Keith is made to start from the beginning. Sometimes the passages are poetry or lectures, but nothing particularly interesting to take his mind away.

It does not matter the subject: every task is sisyphean, and even though Keith is sitting more than he has in his life, he has tears in his eyes when he finally collapses into bed.

And even in that, there’s no true rest. Shiro falls on him greedily, though Keith can tell he’s attempting to hold himself back for Keith’s benefit, as a reward of sorts.

"My Keith," Shiro murmurs as he touches him, kneads into his flesh. "My clever, clever Keith."

 _Not so clever,_ Keith thinks bitterly, _not enough_.

* * *

But he has nothing to do but learn: The lessons keep going, with no replacement tutor in sight. Keith figures the more there are, the more he must endure.

So he cheats. He holes up in the library, ostensibly for the homework Shiro assigns, to fish out guides or translations of leather-bound books with pages as thin as onion-skin and that smell of either mildew or mothballs. Sometimes he’s so confused that he looks at the accompanying illustrations, like a child, to piece out the basic story, and writes a vague summary in lieu of a direct translation.

Shiro slashes them all up with bright red ink.

Luckily, he can do passible arithmetic, because those would be hard to fake, but he can’t do much about etiquette, or anything that requires rote memorization.

Every day is breaking him down: molding, pinching, refining, rewriting.

Whatever is not wanted is discarded, and whatever’s left is gilded. His prose and verbal musings become elegant, but with no true meaning behind it, like hollow bird bones. He learns to answer with such confidence that no further questions are asked. And in some ways, it becomes natural: quiet voice, neat steps, straight spine, wit as sharp as a pin for only opportune moments.

Keith begins commerce for his efforts, and at least that is familiar. Supply and demand and product and profit margins make him think of Marmora: of the gnawing guilt seeing red numbers on the ledger, nights of fretting and pacing, meals barely picked at and scraped back into the pot. At least that part is over, a weight lifted off of Kolivan, but only, he one day thinks, if Shiro keeps doing as well as he does.

It makes him wonder—for the first time—what _exactly_ Shiro does. He can be more useful than representing Shiro; he can make sure, with his own efforts, Marmora flourishes.

Shiro seems to be satisfied for now, enough for Keith to wonder when he can spend the goodwill, to punch it in like a meal ticket. Something inside him warns him to shore it up as carefully as preserves for winter, to take out only when he needs it the most.

* * *

“There are no lessons today,” Shiro announces one morning at breakfast.

His statements are always proclamations, ripe questions hanging in the air. Keith quickly swallows the spoonful of porridge to respond, dried fruit scraping down his throat.

“How come?” Keith asks, eager for a difference in routine.

“I’m going to show you something,” Shiro says, then flashes Keith a strange grimace of a smile. “So there are no surprises, or secrets between us."

Those last words should sound sweet, reassuring. But he's learned very early to not be reassured, and so Keith dresses for outside as slowly as he dares, shaking out each coat and laying out each pair of gloves. It looks chilly outside, yet that he doesn’t mind; it seems like ages since he’s felt air not from a slightly-cracked window on his face.

When he comes down, clear impatience melts from Shiro’s face into an approving nod.

To his surprise, they don’t leave the grounds, but veer off into the wooded area behind the house. His heart slaps against his chest with each step the further and further they go, Shiro’s grip on his arm growing tighter and tighter. The path is as smooth as polished marble, not even littered with branches or stones or footprints. Cold bites into his throat; he looks up at Shiro, his face a mask.

They come to an iron gate, which opens soundlessly but clangs sharply behind them. Keith can make out the Latin inscribed, _Omnes una manet nox_ , and shivers.

Out of the dirt rises a tomb. Unlike everything on the grounds, it is deceptively simple, an arch of polished stone, with only the words _Kuron and Ryou Shirogane_.

Is this another lesson? Of another model his husband expects him to be?

He wonders if Shiro's brothers would have been kind to him. Would that have mattered? Would he have to act for two more members in the household? Would he fear a hidden cruelty in corridors, or worse, an open sort that even his husband would not bother to stop? He is not sure if he could contend with more than one Shirogane.

"That's us," Shiro says in his ear. "The last of the Shiroganes."

 _He changed my name,_ Keith thinks. _Or I belong to him in a way that it doesn't matter what my name is._

They stand over the grave, Shiro's grip tight on his shoulder and eyes slightly closed. Keith wonders if he should have folded hands to his lips, if he should kneel on this near-frozen ground for these people he’s never met and never will.

 _Please,_ Keith instead prays. _Let no one forget who I am._

“I think you’re ready,” he hears Shiro say, almost to himself.


End file.
